I don't mind a different battle system, it was the only decent thing to XIII, but NO UEMATSU! ;_;

My mai gripe with Advent Children was the complete change in tone, and how they completely ignored Cloud's development. Cloud isn't supposed to be Squall. Only Reno had any sort of humor, and it was way ooc. That guy killed more people than Sephiroth!

There really was so much lovable weirdness to FFVII; Hojo's mad science attempt to coerce bestiality, the golden, shiny, wire of hope, that scene with 20+ gym bros/male prostitutes and poor Cloud, Tifa and Barett bitching about stairs, the wig that gym bro kept in his crotch, that slap fight on the giant cannon, Barret in a sailor suit, Red XIII impersonating a human, the date play, the bumblebee prostitute that pokes Cloud in the crotch with her stinger, stealing Tifa's underwear, and everyone threatening to maim Corneo's family jewels.

Hm, I can’t vouch for that, considering that I’ve been just lurking around without really trying to go into discussions, but that doesn’t exactly surprise me. It just seems that people are trying a little too hard to appear intelligent and witty and fit in some INTP stereotype - and while everybody seems to be joking around more than I remember, it somehow comes across as putting up a front and trying to one-up each other.

But meh. I’m nothing but a lurker, so it’s just as likely that I’m doing the “you kids get off my lawn” thing.

Everybody's house has a telepresence robot, this started off with ones similar to the robot from the Jetsons but being remote controlled by humans for short periods to perform tasks for agreed upon rates, which has since developed into myriad of different kinds with rudimentary AI which are still remote controlled whenever someone wants it to do something complex.

For example you might have a robot that looks like a dog sized dragon which has it's own dog/cat like intelligence but you can also command or directly control it through your neural interface, this is considered perfectly normal.

AIs of an adult human level exist but are only owned by wealthy people and the AI usually has a degree of relative independence, kind of like the old British thing of having the maids/butler you employ live in your house, they're not slaves despite the similarities.

That bunny is hypnotic. Anyway if you really want to know (Gimp was the magic word) I'd say they wouldn't be taught anything, you'd just stick a neural interface in their head with an amount of rewritable memory and tell them whatever they need to know whenever they'd need to know it then have them immediately forget it the moment they don't so they can live happy carefree lives under my complete control.